Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Highlighting House Ads: Crimebuster's Paper Drive

Here's a great WW2 era ad featuring Crimebuster, the star of Lev Gleason's Boy Comics. I assume that CB (as he's known among his friends) takes the name of his comic book quite literally as he only seems to be addressing 'fellers'. I love the breaking of the fourth wall here, as CB's earnestly lectures the reader on the importance of paper. I never knew that 'most of the wood choppers' were off finding the war, and that was the key reason behind the paper shortage. You will note that CB never tells you to turn in your old comic books; just magazines, newspapers and such. They move on to pure scare tactics in the captions, stating that without more paper 'we won't have any more comic magazines'. Oh, the horror!